I have a cheapie sound system in my house (2 speaker Philips, $100 from Target). I also have some nice outdoor speakers installed on the back porch that a former owner left behind. I connected both the outdoor speakers and the two indoor speakers to the Philips stereo/receiver. Since I only have enough ports on the back of the receiver for two speakers, I had to pair up the speaker wires (one red indoor + one red outdoor; one black indoor + one black outdoor) and insert into the black and red ports. Then repeat that process a second time and push those wires into the other pair of red/black ports. So now I have four speakers powered up and it works fine.

My problem is that the speakers inside are louder than the speakers outside. So when I want to play music outside at a reasonable volume, it gets too loud in the house. By the way, the outdoor speakers are no louder if I manually disconnect the indoor speakers from the ports. Also, the outdoor speaker volume is controlled by a dial in the kitchen. I have the dial turned up to max volume.

My thinking was that I would use a lamp cord switch on the indoor speakers so I can flip the switch and turn off the indoor speakers. That way I can crank up the outdoor volume without causing people to flee the interior of the house with blood dripping from their ears.

Is this a good solution to my problem? If not, what is?

The outdoor speaker wire is thick Monster cable. There is about 50 feet of cable between the receiver and the speaker. The indoor speaker wire is super thin (24 gauge?) wire and only 4 feet of wire from the receiver to the speaker.